Wednesday, December 13, 2006

This would be funny if the columnist weren't entirely serious: Conservative columnist and garden-variety homophobe Jim Rutz is worried that soy is making kids 'gay'.

The dangerous food I'm speaking of is soy. Soybean products are feminizing, and they're all over the place. You can hardly escape them anymore.

I have nothing against an occasional soy snack. Soy is nutritious and contains lots of good things. Unfortunately, when you eat or drink a lot of soy stuff, you're also getting substantial quantities of estrogens. ...

Soy is feminizing, and commonly leads to a decrease in the size of the penis, sexual confusion and homosexuality. That's why most of the medical (not socio-spiritual) blame for today's rise in homosexuality must fall upon the rise in soy formula and other soy products. (Most babies are bottle-fed during some part of their infancy, and one-fourth of them are getting soy milk!) Homosexuals often argue that their homosexuality is inborn because "I can't remember a time when I wasn't homosexual." No, homosexuality is always deviant. But now many of them can truthfully say that they can't remember a time when excess estrogen wasn't influencing them.

What's so disheartening about this sort of nonsense is that chaps like this will ignore tons of science, which indicates that homosexuality is quite natural, but they don't mind embracing nonsensical pseudo-science when it suits their prejudices.

Note that Rutz offers no evidence for his theory, only the idea that soy is feminizing, thereby nonsensically conflating femininity with homosexuality.

I'd like to hear his explanation for where lesbians come from. Too much steak as a child, maybe? And do they serve a lot of soy in Catholic seminaries? And why isn't the incidence of homosexuality far higher in China, Japan and Korea, than here? Places where soy has been consumed for some 2000 years. (I've copied Mr. Rutz on this post in the hopes that he'll address these questions.)

More: Here's an article from Mothering, which goes into much more responsible detail than Rutz's without resorting to homophobia.

And PZ Meyers actually does some proper research and confirms it's nonsense.

Interestingly enough, a Google search reveals that Rutz's article was originally entitled "A devil food is turning our kids into homosexuals." Guess he thought he ought to tone it down if he was going to convince anyone.

Actually, Rutz should write another column apologize for creating what'll likely turn into another damaging urban legend. One than manages to spread pseudo-science whilst simultaneously vilifying an entire segment of society.